What Do You Prefer?

[Koren]

What are your tastes in Biography, Autobiography, Memoir? For instance, entertainment, memoir, history, real-life, etc.

[Robin]

I prefer and autobiography if there is one available. Memoirs are also nice to sink into and a straight biography with cooperation of the subject are high on the list. I never know who will sound interesting enough to read about so I'm all over the place on who the subjects are.

[Selina]

I like memoirs.
Some biographies can be just a dry listing of what people did or who they knew but doesn't really tell you about how they felt or anything like that.

[Karen]

I like all of the above in your list, Koren. Probably the type I would least likely read have to do with sports and pro athletes.

[Koren]

I prefer entertainment autobiographies and memoirs the best. I like history bios sometimes as long as they arent textbook-ish. Will read just about anything, even if I dont know the person. I like to see how people's minds work. I dont like books that are mostly a list of people's achievements and who they know.

[Robin]

I enjoy autobiographies the most, unless it's a historic figure and there isn't one available. I've been enjoying reading those from WWI and WW2 most recently. I enjoy some biographies from the entertainment industry if it's someone I admire. I'm a shameless Anglophile so I read royal biographies as well - even though most of them are fairly speculative. They are the National Enquirers of my bookshelf. Memoirs, diaries, and travel essays are also fun for me.

[Karen]

Koren wrote: "I prefer entertainment autobiographies and memoirs the best. I like history bios sometimes as long as they arent textbook-ish. Will read just about anything, even if I dont know the person. I like ..."

I agree. Those aren't as interesting, especially the name dropping.

[Fishface]

I like 'untold-story' biographies -- some deviation from the official version of events -- when I can get them -- assuming they aren't complete spinach, like something explaining the REAL reason Marilyn Monroe was killed by the FBI is that she was pregnant by an alien from outer space.

I love really odd people, though, so biographies like these are favorites:

Freak Like Me
The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the CountercultureGhosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders: An Urban Historical

...and true-crime stories are great too. Sometimes the book is the biography of the criminal, sometimes the victim, sometimes the cop, sometimes the prosecutor, sometimes even a juror.